What’s in the naming rights? Contemplating donations based on Kentucky priorities.
Tie Rod is so mountainy that he says “Fi-diddle-eye, diddle-eye-fie” between each sentence. He is a ”c.c.c.,” a certified colorful character, and the producers of “The Price is Right” heard about him and decided to make sure he is a contestant when that show comes to the Appalachian Wireless Arena, nee Expo Center in March, Drew Carey and all. Tie Rod has been told to be there and wait for his name to be randomly called to “Come on Down.”
He has also been tipped off about the things he was going to bid on and provided just enough information to make a decent bid. Here is how it will go. George Gray and the girls will hold up a picture of a state university law school, and the contestants will bid on how much it costs to get it named after you. Tie Rod was not told the exact cost, but was told that $22 million was slightly too high, hint, hint. So, to be ready on the big show, he has been checking out how much rich people, or people who can’t get over their big case, or banks, or grocery chains have to put out to satisfy their edifice complexes.
In his research Tie Rod has learned a lot. You find out what part of a university is more important by seeing what the university charged to sell it. And some investors get themselves a pretty good deal. W. T. Young only put up a mere $5 million, about one good racehorse, to buy the University of Kentucky library name and send Margaret King to the stacks, but that doesn’t mean, necessarily, that books are less important than basketball. Joe Craft got the basketball stuff for $6 million, several trainloads of coal, but it could be that old W. T was just a shrewd businessman and the library could have brought more.
Right below law in importance is the business school. A guy who made his fortune selling Chevrolets under the name “Wild Bill Gatton” was able to land the business school name for a mere $14 million. Tie Rod wondered why they did not name the business school “The Wild Bill Gatton School of Business.” Prudence.
Further inquiry got Tie Rod Ready for “The Price is Right,” which will be held in a public arena named after a private phone company for a mere $100,000 a year, and a free party line. If Drew Carey asks Tie Rod to bid on how much a football field name costs he will know that it is a cool $18 million. Banks have to pay around $21 million to ruin, in memory of Garvice Kincaid, the name of the second most familiar basketball court in the world, and the first outside of Madison Square.
Tie Rod just wonders how much on earth it would cost somebody like Amazon to just buy up the whole Commonwealth name. They couldn’t put “Amazon” in the state name as it would be confused with the other Amazon, a river.
Tie Rod hopes they start asking him how much certain things cost, like pardons, or sheriffs, or social workers. He could get close on those.
Larry Webster is a Pikeville attorney.